HomeNews5D nanostructured quartz glass optical memory could provide 'unlimited' data storage for a million years

5D nanostructured quartz glass optical memory could provide ‘unlimited’ data storage for a million years

"Superman memory crystal" recordings could survive the end of the human race

July 10, 2013

5D optical memory disc (credit: University of Southampton)

University of Southampton and Eindhoven University of Technology.scientists have developed a new technology that could store vast quantities of information — 360 TB on a disc, about 100 times more than current disk drives — for more than a million years [1].

‘Superman memory crystal’

Using a high speed femtosecond laser, data is written on self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, and stored in five dimensions: size and orientation in addition to the three-dimensional position on the nanostructured material.

Each disc has three layers [2] of nanostructured dots, with dots separated by five microns (one millionth of a meter) [3]. The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarization of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polarizer, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses.[4]

The glass-memory technology has been coined “Superman memory crystal,” as in the “memory crystals” in Superman movies.

The disc has thermal stability up to 1000°C (1832°F) and practically unlimited lifetime. As a test, a 300 kb digital copy of a text file was successfully recorded.

Ideal for massive long-term archival storage

The research is led by Jingyu Zhang from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC). “We are developing a very stable and safe form of portable memory using glass, which could be highly useful for organizations with big archives,” said Zhang.

“At the moment, companies have to back up their archives every five to ten years because hard-drive memory has a relatively short lifespan. Museums who want to preserve information or places like the national archives, where they have huge numbers of documents, would really benefit.”

Professor Peter Kazansky, the ORC’s group supervisor, adds: “It is thrilling to think that we have created the first document which will likely survive the human race. This technology can secure the last evidence of civilization: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”

UPDATE July 10, 2013 from Prof. Zhang:

[1] For comparison: a Blu-ray disc can store 23.5 GB and lasts about 7 years.

[2] The final disc will have hundreds of layers; the three-layer structure was only to demonstrate this technique. A disc in this format that has the same thickness as a CD (1.2 mm) will have around 400 layers. It will look like a normal CD disc but made of glass.

[3] The targeted data density is one byte per spot in about a 5 cubic micron volume.

[4] A laser scanning device similar as the one used to read CD, DVD and Blu-ray is used to read the discs.

How 1 guy said up there,
Actually is a Romanian technology invented by DR. EUGEN PAVEL in 1998!
Dr. Eugen Pavel is romanian Professor of Physics. Since 1998 he has won numerous awards for this invention, including the Eureka gold medal – 1999, the World Press Award Periodicals, Kent Premium Lights Annual Awards for Innovation and the gold medal at the Salon of Inventions in Geneva 2004.

Actually is a Romanian technology invented by DR. EUGEN PAVEL in 1998!
Dr. Eugen Pavel is romanian Professor of Physics. Since 1998 he has won numerous awards for this invention, including the Eureka gold medal – 1999, the World Press Award Periodicals, Kent Premium Lights Annual Awards for Innovation and the gold medal at the Salon of Inventions in Geneva 2004.

For secure storage, this kind of durability is vital. This technology seems to meet the requirements of an organization like the Long Now, who wants to store data for millenia, just incase our current civilization gets wiped out by something.

Can someone tell me why this is called “5 dimensional” ? a 5th dimension would assume that we have literally figured out how to access and store memory in a dimension that is outside of ours. I figure this is some kind of marketing…

We’re just now tapping into the potential of crystals and holography. Like Peter was saying it could quickly be replaced as tech accelerates. Just give me holographic TV. If durable it could be a great system for A.I.

[1] For comparison: a Blu-ray disc can store 23.5 GB and lasts about 7 years.

[2] The final disc will have hundreds of layers; the three-layer structure was only to demonstrate this technique. A disc in this format that has the same thickness as a CD (1.2 mm) will have around 400 layers. It will look like a normal CD disc but made of glass.

[3] The targeted data density is one byte per spot in about a 5 cubic micron volume.

[4] A laser scanning device similar as the one used to read CD, DVD and Blu-ray is used to read the discs.

Hope that’s a typo. 17 or even 70 years sound a bit short of a life span for a blu-ray disk. Well, I guess all the movies I watch are going to be in a cloud or something like that in a couple of years anyway. Most of my entertainment already comes from Netflix or Spotify etc.

But this thing could be a great way of storing data. Maybe use it as a hard drive for a server, Just fill a satellite with these things and let everyone store what ever they like there.

What the… blu-raydisc.com says 10-15 years. That’s crazy! It would mean that if cd’s and dvd’s are similar, some of my discs shouldn’t work anymore, and many should stop working soon. I know people who have a huge collection of music cd’s. Some from the early nineties, could it really be that those won’t work anymore?

This method can be reversed and see if there is ancient knowledge stored in some crystal we find around. This idea is a bit radical but if it can be there could be support for advanced civilizations millions of years ago.

Delightful notion. Some shard of data glass roaming the universe. We’d have to find it in space – would it withstand atmospheric re-entry? Doesn’t Fermi paradox have a bearing though? If glass is so cheap and easy to make, so durable storing data, why isn’t space flooded with these objects? Or have we just not looked yet?

On day we may record all of the known knowledge on these Memory Crystals and shoot them like seeds across the universe so that they might one day survive and be found by other alien civilizations. Imagine these Crystals have a copy of every book, every song, every painting, every poem, every play and movie on them. Also all our gathered scientific data about the Universe as well as the history of the Earth and the human race. Maybe they are not just shot into space, but are on self piloting crafts that also have a seed bank and ways to create life on some distant worlds.

Yeah, good luck burning that CD. A bad sector & no more Rembrandt. A general consensus that we can omit that whole flatulence thing. We’re already in the memory crystal; it just takes a lifetime to read. Yeah, and on that ‘bad sector’ thing, from where else could the platypus come, right? A few dots polarized light just a little helter-skelter.

In all reality, we’re producing exabytes of information every day as a species/society. What constitutes “human history”, “scientific data”, & “art”? The article’s title is misleading. 360 TB really isn’t “unlimited storage” anymore.

The vast majority of all ‘information’ is useless masturbatory trash. Think of all the cat videos on youtube or all the unenlightened self-help books out there. The actual useful core of human knowledge – hard sciences, mathematics, technology, and knowledge of the human body and mind – would probably fit into far less than 1 TB once suitably compressed.

About 15 000 TBs (fifteen thousand), which is also 15 PB (Petabyte).
But some other scientists estimate a different number (e.g. if the human brain is a quantum computer, then the number would much, much higher).

We could also encode the DNA of every human currently alive. Clones could be easily created from a repository of IPP Stem cells, or should synthetic molecular biology continue to progress – created out of whole cloth.

Combine this with a digital upload and people can easily travel the stars.